


intermediate cartography

by whimsicalimages



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, Idiots in Love, M/M, Post-Canon, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 11:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17866220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalimages/pseuds/whimsicalimages
Summary: Costis plants a tree. Kamet loathes him so much that he loses the hang of it entirely.





	intermediate cartography

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who put up with me yelling about this but especially thanks to [A](http://hellaarabella.tumblr.com/) and [M](http://digitalmirth.tumblr.com/). I read this series for the first time 12 (!) years ago, and, well. Here I am! Enjoy.

On market day, an extremely downtrodden-looking cat trails in after Costis upon his return from one of his excursions into the green hills of Roa. The cat meows loudly enough to startle Kamet from his letter to Relius, which he’s trying to finish before the light fades.

He lifts his pen so that the ink doesn’t blotch, and turns to face the cat. The cat stares at him, then solemnly puts a paw on his foot.

“She followed me home,” Costis says, sheepish.

Kamet looks up at him, and frowns. He must not have gone far today if he didn’t take any weapons.

The freckles across the bridge of Costis’ nose grow darker by the day. It is even more distressing to contemplate the freckles on his broad shoulders, which are mostly uncovered by his light summer chiton. Kamet takes off his spectacles -- a “gift” he’d found in his pack on the second day out of Attolia, with no note and only one possible source -- so that he no longer has to see Costis’ horrible shoulders or, worse, his face, with any clarity.

“I can see that. You’ve probably deprived some poor farmer of his mouse catcher,” he says, nodding at the cat.

“She’s free to leave, if she wants. I don’t even know where she came from,” Costis says.

Kamet, who knows that Costis both regularly sneaks food to the stray dogs that laze about the square of the little village nearest the temple _and_ has named every single one of those dogs, raises his eyebrows.

“I didn’t give her anything!” Costis protests. “Though she may have seen me catching fish.”

Kamet hums.

“A cat is a good companion,” Costis says.

“At least it’s not a lion cub,” replies Kamet.

-

The other scribes and scholars at the temple are mostly from Ferria, and Kamet finds real joy in discussing the work they do. Ferrian isn’t one of the languages he speaks fluently, but many of the temple workers speak the Attolian of diplomats, rather than the rolling Roan dialect which is more difficult for him to parse. They call him Kay instead of Kamet, but it’s an acceptable alternative, since they also know him as a free man.

Kamet makes friends and learns about Ferria and watches the sea when he can, and then he comes home to Costis, red-gold from the sun, and thinks that he would be perfectly content to spend the rest of his life this way if only the gods would allow it. He was going to be the right hand of an emperor, and now he is disgustingly happy translating scrolls and keeping house with an Attolian soldier. It’s abominable how much he doesn’t mind.

-

The next suspiciously domestic occurrence sees Costis bursting through the door with an armful of branches, grinning. The cat -- which Costis has taken to calling Onarcha, for her tyranny -- looks displeased at this turn of events.

“Arla in the village let me take some cuttings from her olive trees to plant,” Costis says, clearly proud of himself.

Kamet, who can track down a discrepancy in crop yields or troop numbers or taxes in his head, who can speak five languages fluently and another two enough to get by, is admittedly a little mystified by the entire process of growing things. Of course, he could rattle off any amount of information about the historical importance of olive trees to the Attolian economy, but all he really knows about the plant itself is that it produces olives.

“We will have fresh olives?” he hazards.

Costis smiles at him, and Kamet quietly seethes as rebellious warmth fills him. “Not for a while. Even from cuttings, olive trees take a few years to fruit.”

“We will have a tree,” Kamet clarifies.

“We’ll have a tree,” Costis agrees. “This soil should be good for it.” He sees that Onarcha is still eyeing him warily and shakes the branches at her until she backs up and all her fur stands on end.

“Stop taunting the cat,” Kamet says. “It’s beneath her dignity.”

 _"Her_ dignity? I knew you liked her,” Costis says, turning away. He’s triumphant and, as usual, irritatingly correct.

This whole thing, Kamet reflects, wouldn’t be such a problem if he didn’t know that eventually it must end. He allows himself a deep breath and goes back to his translations.

-

Marai is the only woman from Ferria in the temple, though there are several Roan women. Kamet has heard that the Duke of Ferria allows her primarily because she is his cousin, and a favorite.

“Kay, will you come to the summer festival tomorrow?” she asks him, when the leaves are first touched with green.

Not being Roan, Kamet hadn’t thought he was invited. But Marai isn’t Roan, either. “I hadn’t planned on it,” Kamet says.

“Plan on it, then! Arla told me to come, and she said nobody would look askance if I brought Philomena, so you should bring your friend, too.”

The way she says “friend” makes it clear that she means something completely different, but Kamet doesn’t have the heart to correct her. Perhaps this Philomena is the real reason she’s not in the court of Ferria now -- something as simple as love is never easy for people like them. It always has a cost.

She begins tapping her foot. “Well?” she prods him. “Come! You’ve been here for enough time that you’ve been adopted by half the village. And your friend never visits you at the temple! I want to meet him, Kay.”

“He’s usually out hiking and collecting plants,” Kamet says.

She frowns at him.

“I’ll come, and I’ll ask him,” Kamet agrees.

He’s planning on doing neither, but when he gets home, Costis is already there and doing something complicated with a handful of periwinkle wildflowers.

He looks up at Kamet, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles. It’s terrible. “Huron told me when I was buying chicken that we ought to go to the festival tomorrow,” Costis says.

Kamet makes a noise of assent. “Marai at the temple told me the same,” he says. “Though she didn’t mention anything about flowers.”

Costis looks down at his hands, but Kamet sees a trace of red on his face. “At the spring festivals in Attolia, most people wear flowers.”

Kamet had not attended any festivals in Attolia, as Nahuseresh had meticulously avoided as many social obligations involving the peasantry as he could while still maintaining good diplomatic standing. But Eugenides, in his guise as the errand boy, had gone to more than one, and always returned laden with flowers and honeyed figs and nutcakes which he generously bestowed on any unfortunate Mede secretaries lurking in the palace kitchens.

“Tell me about the festivals, then,” Kamet says without really thinking about it. He would say almost anything for Costis to keep looking at him like that.

The smile sneaks back over Costis’ face like ivy. Kamet feels it in his chest.

-

By the next day Costis has convinced him to put the periwinkle in his hair. Kamet would feel wildly conspicuous if everyone else in the temple weren’t also bedecked in flower garlands courtesy of the Roan scholars.

“Periwinkle,” Marai says knowingly when she walks by him, trailing her own daffodils. “It sets off the gold in your eyes.”

-

Months pass, and the cuttings do not sprout, despite Costis’ careful watering and hovering over them, and Costis mopes about dejectedly while pretending that he’s not disappointed.

“You could ask Arla for advice,” Kamet suggests.

“I grew up on a farm, I know how to grow an olive tree,” Costis replies. “Also, I try not to ask Arla for advice about anything.”

This is wise. Arla is not only the village matriarch, but also the village gossip, and Kamet has heard her declaim at length about everything from the state of the weaver’s new fabric to the romantic affairs of the temple workers; he is endlessly grateful that he’s skirted her notice so far. If war comes to Roa, Arla will know about it even before Kamet, and will likely give any invading army enough of an earful to buy a few extra hours before any fighting breaks out. Asking her for advice is asking for a three hour lecture over vile herbal tea, as both of them have learned the hard way.

Kamet shakes his head. “Your experience is failing you?”

Costis narrows his eyes. “The tree will grow.”

Onarcha meows a confirmation, and Kamet shrugs and absently scratches under her chin.

Three weeks later, Costis drags Kamet outside to see a tiny sprout emerging from the soil. Kamet refuses to look him in the eyes. He may already be a doomed man but there’s no need to make it worse.

“Three years and we’ll have olives, Kamet,” Costis announces.

“So, so, so,” Kamet says, not pointing out that planning three years in advance seems like a pointless exercise when the war will take Costis away far sooner.

-

“Make sure you get extra for that cat of yours,” Huron the butcher tells Kamet in late summer, when he’s making his weekly purchases.  

“She’s not my cat,” he says.

Huron squints at him. “Then get extra for that cat which is not yours but lives in your house,” he says.

Kamet, knowing when to accept defeat, silently pays for more.

-

Sometimes, Kamet will turn from his writing, or walk through the door, or look out the window at Costis fussing around the tree, and Costis will be looking back at him. It’s not expectant, but speculative. Costis isn’t asking for anything outright, but waiting for Kamet. Costis is far too kind and patient in general, and he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s driving Kamet slowly insane.

Kamet can’t bring himself to ask. Both of them know that something is growing, here in Roa, but Kamet can’t name it. He refuses to.

Once you name a thing, it becomes very difficult to let go.  

-

“How are you to earn your keep, then?” Kamet had asked, a bare handful of weeks into their stay in Roa.

“He sent me off with a full year’s salary and a second waiting for me here,” Costis had confided.

Every new piece of information Kamet had learned about the King seemed to serve only to increasingly confound him, but he hadn’t pointed out how eerie it was that Eugenides had prepared far enough in advance as to leave a significant sum of money for them in Roa before their arrival. Costis had surely already known. Once more, Kamet had tried to reconcile the serious King and the errant sandal-polisher in his head, and failed.

“The King of Attolia is generous,” Kamet had murmured.

“My King knows that Roa overlooks all the best sea routes for the Mede navy to attack the Little Peninsula,” Costis had corrected.

“And you are his favorite.”

Costis had eyed him, amused. “Don’t worry, Kamet. I’m sure you’re near the top of his list.”

“It seems the King of Attolia enjoys overturning the lives of those in his favor.”

“I myself am glad of it.”

A pause. “I am, as well.”

-

The year turns, summer passing into Roa’s mild winter and back again to spring. Costis finishes charting the land around them and acquires a horse to begin making more distant trips, though he’s never gone for longer than a month. He copies and recopies his maps in careful detail and passes them to a string of nondescript Attolian sailors on the trading ships. He waters the olive tree on a schedule Kamet can’t parse, and he feeds the cat too many times a day. When Costis leaves for more than a week, Kamet is made to feel like a miser by Onarcha’s constant plaintive yowling, despite Huron’s assurances that a farm cat should only eat a certain amount.

Kamet makes translations and watches the ships dart in and out of the bay and allows himself to very quietly love Costis, wondering when this life he has carved out will tumble down around his ears like a poorly-built house.

 _You worry forever,_ Godekker had said. _You’ll never feel safe._ Kamet had heard the truth of it, even then. He wishes he couldn’t feel the war on the horizon coming to take what it can from him. He may keep his life, his scrolls, the temple and the friends he has made there, but there is little chance he can keep Costis. Even good kings, and kings who aren’t so much kings as thieves, need soldiers to fight their wars. Costis is a soldier still.

Kamet repeats this to himself, hoping it will make things easier and knowing that it will not.

-

Later, when they have been living in their cottage in Roa for close to a year, Kamet dares to ask: “Can Attolia survive?”

What he means is a whole litany of things which they both know -- war is coming, unless the tension can be diffused beforehand, and Attolia will bear its brunt. The only hope for the Little Peninsula is a short war, and Mede tacticians are experts at long sieges. Costis will leave, as he must. Routing the navy at Hemsha had angered the Emperor, but imperial gold could buy as many ships as necessary, and Attolia would need all her troops. Kamet will re-learn a solitary life.

He’s asking because he wants to hear Costis’ unshakeable faith. It gives him a candle to hold against his own morbid certainty that the Medes will overrun all Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis, and Attolia’s beautiful gardens will be razed to the ground as punishment, and the brilliant young King and Queen will die with them, and Costis will die in their defense.

“You were in Attolia when the Sounisian navy burned,” Costis says.

It isn’t really a question, but Kamet nods. “Sounis blamed Attolia, Attolia blamed Eddis.”

“My King burned the navy,” Costis says. “He went himself to steal the magus of Sounis after convincing the courts of all three countries that he was out of favor and still recovering from the loss of his hand. He was ill, but I think he knew then that Medea would invade sooner or later at any cost. His plan began with burning Sounis’ navy and ended with chasing the Medes off Attolia’s shore, and on the way he convinced Attolia to marry him.”

Kamet should doubt this as too far-fetched to be the truth, but does not. It’s not the story told in the Empire, but most stories told in the Empire discount the King of Attolia as an imbecile, and Nahuseresh had done his level best to make Attolia herself out as a villain who had taken advantage of him. This was one of the tales Nahuseresh’s wife had been particularly unhappy with.

“You think he can outwit them?” Kamet asks.

Costis considers the question. “I think he has spent some years ensuring that the Emperor thinks him a fool, and I think anyone who underestimates him eventually pays for it in blood.” He shrugs. “I cannot say what he will do, since I’m not a tactician or a strategist, and he is both.”

“You are not simply a soldier.”

“I am a soldier, though I am not simple,” Costis allows with a smile. “And I trust my King. He will make sure Attolia comes out the other side of this.”

“I hope you are right,” Kamet says, and realizes that he does.

-

Attolian ships dock at Roa’s port once a month, and three times a month from the Greater Peninsula, ferrying scholars to and from the temple. The Medes pass through rarely, and Kamet avoids them, but he takes care to befriend sailors from the other ports, especially younger ones with worse jobs. Few slaves end up on the trading ships, but many indentured do, and they’re the ones he knows have the best information. With the spyglass, he could see a navy coming, but he’d rather know in advance.

Today, the cabin boy from the _Nerin’s Dawn_ is unusually nervous as he hands Kamet a letter, and sunset finds him trudging home with a message he doesn’t want to deliver and a thousand reasons to hide it away.

Costis is pruning the olive tree, looking entirely at peace, while Onarcha winds around his ankles and makes a nuisance of herself. Kamet stops a few steps away, memorizing the angle at which the sun hits Costis’ hair, the dirt on his knees, the comical face he makes when he’s concentrating. He feels faintly ill; he feels like he would trade every precious scroll in the temple for another year. Even maybe for another month.

“Are you going to give me the bad news, or should I guess while you stand there?” Costis asks.  

Kamet thinks for half a moment more about lying, before finally dismissing it. Trust is a fragile thing. “You’ve a berth on an Attolian ship leaving harbor in the morning,” he says. “The skirmishes between navies north of Zabrisa have become worse and the Emperor is planning to invade in late summer. The yeomen from the Ferrian ships say there are rumors of a Mede-instigated plot against the King and Queen in Attolia city.”

“The King has called me back. I need to be there to protect them,” Costis says quietly.

Kamet exhales. “So,” he says.

“I leave in the morning, then,” Costis says.

Kamet closes his eyes, tries not to rock back on his heels as if punched.

A hand on his shoulder makes him look up and meet Costis’ eyes. He looks serious and concerned and very, very beautiful. “Kamet, keep yourself safe while I’m gone, and run if you have to. I don’t know whether the war will come here but I’d rather you stayed alive if it does, and you’re still shit with a sword.”

“The war won’t come here,” Kamet says, indulging the urge towards contrarianism to try and stifle the threatening despair. Costis frowns at him in consternation, so he gives in and continues, “But I will do my best to stay alive, so long as you do the same.”

Costis touches their foreheads together briefly. “I will.”

-

After Costis leaves, Kamet’s friends at the temple prevent him from becoming a shut-in, despite his best efforts. He means to ensure they don’t realize anything has changed, but something about his demeanor must be obvious, because they are forever pestering him about meals and scholarly discussions, and it is so much easier to play along than to go home to a house empty of anyone but Onarcha.

“Kay, are you all right?” Marai asks, when he spills his inkpot for the first time in months. It sounds like she’s been asking the same question for several minutes.

She touches his elbow when he doesn’t respond, worried eyes scanning his face. She reminds him vividly of Laela in that moment.

He shrugs her off and leans down to right the inkpot. “I’m fine.”

She crosses her arms. “I saw him leaving on the ship to Attolia last week,” she says, hesitating only briefly before barrelling on. “If Philomena left to fight a war for Ferria, I would be unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy.”

“It’s not nice to lie to your friends,” Marai says.

All he does is lie to his friends, Kamet thinks. His presence here is built on a lie to his friends. He avoids her gaze, and instead looks down at the ink he spilled on the floor. He’ll have to fetch a cleaning cloth. He’ll have to get more ink sooner than he expected.

Marai isn’t leaving without an answer, it seems. “I really am fine. I’ve just forgotten how to be alone,” he says at last.

Marai sighs. “Oh, Kay. Nobody ever really learns.”

-

Some of the fighting is visible off the coast, and Kamet can only feel grateful that Costis is likely in the Attolian capital rather than on the ships that routinely limp away from combat in the Ellid Sea. The trade ships in the Roan harbor grow rarer and then taper off altogether as Ferria sends more resources directly to Attolia. Ferrian temple workers who had hoped to go home before the winter give up and dig in to stay until spring. Onarcha sheds a great deal of fur and stays indoors without Costis rooting around in the garden to tempt her outside. Twice, Mede soldiers sniff around the village, but find nothing of interest besides the fresh fish and Arla’s sharp tongue.

Roa is not worth conquering on its own, and Kamet’s bearing camouflages him: it marks him as a free man among free men.

-

The ice in the bay is just beginning to thaw when Arla pulls him aside on his way to the temple and tells him, “The Magyar traders have it that the Attolians have won. They say that the Medes were tricked into firing on their own ships.” She looks around and lowers her voice, even though nobody besides them is out so soon after sunrise. “They say the Mede Emperor is dead and there is a challenge to the throne keeping his heir occupied.”

Far be it from Kamet to doubt Arla’s network of informants, which surpasses even the one he’s been cultivating. “Thank you,” he says, slightly numb.

She nods at him. “Your soldier will come back soon, then? He always picked ironwort for my tea when he was in the hills, and I’m far too old to go myself.”

“I hope so,” Kamet forces out, trying to reason with the painful wish living in his chest. If Costis yet lives and is capable of travel, it will be weeks before he returns to Roa, if he is returning at all. Even with the spring winds coming, even if he takes the most direct route, it will take at least a month.

He may not be alive to come back, Kamet tells himself. His mutinous heart, given the barest sliver of light, still sings.

-

Weeks pass, and the first Attolian trading ships in months make port at Roa, but Costis is not on them. On the docks, Kamet curses himself for a fool in every language he knows and only relents when a cabin boy passes him a note that simply says “Wait for the spring festival,” written in the royal chickenscratch.

Kamet sighs and makes his peace.

-

It’s another month before the first spring festival comes, and Marai drops a garland of periwinkle on his head in preparation. Today, he does not spill any inkpots.

For once, he is the first to leave the temple. He had been unable to concentrate on the scrolls, because he’d kept glancing out at the bay where two ships with Attolian colors were making their slow way into port.

The docks are lively with the trading season -- Kamet had been right and the war hadn’t come here after all, but the winter had been lean and even the Roans had lived on tenterhooks with only the Magyar caravans bringing in goods. People are glad to speak with traders and sailors, now that the peace is known.

Kamet left his glasses in the temple and has to shade his eyes to see anything in the bright sunlight, and his stomach turns and turns with anxiety until the figure walking towards him resolves itself at last into Costis, grinning hugely and immediately wrapping his arms around Kamet, heedless of the obstruction to traffic they present or the flowers falling out of Kamet’s hair. Costis is warm as a fire in the temperate afternoon. Somehow, Kamet had forgotten.

Kamet makes himself let go first, holding Costis at arm’s length and looking him up and down for obvious injuries. Costis’ grin only grows wider. He has a new feather-shaped scar on his jaw that stretches with it. It doesn’t make him any less handsome.

“I hope you don’t have a head injury, that you’re smiling like that,” Kamet says sharply. He’s not so love-addled yet.

“I’m just glad to be home,” Costis says. The freckles on his nose remain devastating, Kamet notes.

“Home?” Kamet manages to keep his voice steady on the word, but it’s a close thing.

Costis spreads his open hands, as if he understands exactly what and how much he’s offering. “Home,” he repeats.

“I,” Kamet says, and bites his tongue. He doesn’t know what he was going to say, really. The problem is that everything he has ever felt is trying to claw its way up his throat.

“Kamet,” Costis says, and then says it again. It sounds different in his mouth. “Kamet. Surely you knew. I planted you an olive tree.”

“You planted me an olive tree,” Kamet repeats, like an idiot. “I think it’s still alive.”

“It wouldn’t die so fast,” Costis says.

“Onarcha missed you.”

 _"Onarcha_ did?” Costis asks, incredulous.

Kamet sighs. “I did, as well.”

“Kamet, I’m sorry. I wanted to come back sooner.”

“I believe you,” Kamet says, and means it. “I didn’t know, but I believed you when you said you would come back. Also, your King sent a letter.”

Costis shakes his head, rueful. “Of course he did.”

“I’m glad he did. I was worried,” Kamet admits. “It was very quiet here in the winter, and news was hard to come by.”

“So, so, so. No maids for Immakuk, then?”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“Not for me, either,” Costis says, lacing their fingers together and pressing his smile to Kamet’s cheek. “I’m all for the quiet life.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell with me about Queen's Thief on [tumblr](http://keensers.tumblr.com/) or on [dreamwidth](https://whimsicalimages.dreamwidth.org/)!


End file.
